MC - 9/19

After disucssing last class with my boyfriend, he sent me an interesting PDF of an article entitled "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" by David Foster Wallace. The article is long (44 pages) and covers a lot of topics but I felt the first ten pages really said a lot about watching and being watched (also look for sections on metafiction and irony). Television, Wallace says, "is an absolute godsend for a human subspecies that loves to watch people but hates being watched".

This might explain why I get a huge kick out of watching Lindsay Lohan doing strange exercises in the middle of an empty parking lot while I'm at home thanking my lucky stars that papparazzi aren't snapping pics of me doing my own song and dance routine or why I spend hours upon precious hours of watching old Laguna Beach reruns (What? The new cast blows!).

Wallace emphasizes that "We can see Them; They can't see Us". But this doesn't really explain the whole Myspace and Youtube phenomenon. Obviously, even lonely people (especially lonely people) want to be seen and heard no matter how ridiculous they may appear. In fact, I think that's why these two websites are so unbelieveably popular. We've reinvented concepts of what is socially awkward. Case in point, the unforgettable Numa Numa Fan or the Star Wars Kid immortalized by shows like Family Guy and The Colbert Report. I think if Youtube were to launch it's own television network on cable, it might actually be a huge success but since we already have reality shows that make gigantic fools out of people, it might be a little redundant.

I can see how "the gaze of millions" could work similarly in terms of fiction. Writers and readers might stick with a more strict role of observer vs. the observed. But even in fanfiction, the roles can be interchanged.

But I think in Wallace's article he acknowledges that the "rebel postmodernists" are the ones who

"risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists the "How Banal."

How banal, indeed.